The Pentagon announced Friday it has begun aid delivery from a temporary pier to a beach in Gaza for distribution, publishing the first photos of the attached pier on social media and warning Hamas against attacking the aid operation.
One photo appeared to show a truck loaded with aid driving on the beach.
“Earlier this morning, U.S. Central Command successfully anchored the temporary pier to the beach in Gaza with the help of IDF engineers and without any U.S. boots on the ground in Gaza. This group of IDF engineers were specially trained for this mission by U.S. Army engineers in the preceding weeks on a beach in Israel, and again, I’ll reiterate that there were no U.S. boots on the ground,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said at a press conference Friday.
She said hundreds of tons of aid were ready for delivery and thousands of tons were in the pipeline. She said the aid consisted of food and water and would be distributed by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations in Gaza.
She said, however, that delivery of the aid would be slow at first.
“You should really think of this as a crawl, walk, run. This is going to be slow at first. We’re going to do our, you know, initial runs, making sure that everything flows, that nothing [does] get backed up, as it shouldn’t,” she said.
She warned Hamas that an attack on those carrying out the mission would jeopardize “lifesaving aid needed for the Palestinian people.”
Asked if there were any indications Hamas intended to threaten the operation, she said, “We don’t have any indications that there should be any attacks on this pier. But should there be attacks, either towards the humanitarian — the maritime humanitarian corridor or around the marshaling area, that is going to directly affect Palestinian people, the people that need this aid the most.”
She added, “So, if Hamas decides to attack this area, they are directly harming people in Gaza that are starving, that need this aid at a critical time. So, we haven’t seen any indications of that. We were able to secure the pier in overnight. We’re always assessing the security situation and working with the IDF, who’s also helping provide security for our forces. But right now, we’re just focused on getting that aid in.”
However, she acknowledged that there was a risk to the lives of U.S. forces, adding that IDF would protect U.S. forces, as well as a U.S. destroyer in the region.
“I don’t think we’ve come up here with rose-colored glasses and said that this is not a risk. This is an active war zone,” she said. “So we had assurances from the IDF that they will provide security to U.S. forces that are operating and set up that temporary floating causeway. We will also have a presence of a destroyer in the region to ensure that U.S. forces are protected.”
“We take force protection very seriously. We would not have [put] together a mission like this in coordination with the USAID without thinking about our forces that [could] potentially be in harm’s way,” she said.
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